It started with an idea that would not go away.

I was a teenager in the 1990s and loved the Wheel of Time books, a world where time is a cycle of seven Ages. The story is set in the ‘Third Age’ and although you see little of it ‘on screen’, you learn the ‘Second Age’ was a somewhat utopian high tech civilization with magic.

There’s also subtle hints that the First Age is our time. Or at least, the era Robert Jordan was writing the early books in, the closing days of the Cold War. (This isn’t really a spoiler, it’s not relevant to any major plot points).

The big idea was “what was the transition like to live through?”

How was life for the ordinary person when a tiny number developed superpowers?

How would existing national militaries and governments react? How would good people who developed powers react? What about terrible people? What would they do?

Another Wheel of Time inspiration is the idea of history fading into legends that become progressively more inaccurate the further back you go. But that will have to wait, until you discover the secrets at the heart of this world.